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Roland Martin is an idiot.

by wfgodbold

In an opinion piece discussing the recent controversy unleashed Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell’s declaration that April is Confederacy History Month (do we really need another month long history event?), Roland Martin (a political analyst for cnn.com) claims that Confederate soldiers were simply domestic terrorists.

This charge is patently ridiculous. The Confederate States of America were in rebellion against the Union; that is impossible to deny. But to compare their defense of the institution of slavery, when it was waged according to the laws of war of the day, to modern suicide bombings by Islamists who are intent on subjugating the rest of the world to Sharia, is absurd. The Confederate army fought in pitched battles, with uniformed (when they could afford it) soldiers, to take military targets; Islamic terrorists attack civilian targets in a campaign orchestrated not to achieve military goals, but to instill terror in the general populace.

The goals of Islamists are just as heinous as the goals of the Confederacy; that is not in dispute. Heinous goals, no matter how much Mr. Martin may wish, do not a terrorist make. Nazi Germany was evil; the crimes perpetrated upon the Jews in WWII were vile; soldiers in the German army in WWII were not terrorists.

Fighting in an organized army on behalf of a terrible worldview is not terrorism, evil though it may be; but sending suicide bombers to detonate themselves at locations where Islamist clerics are rabble-rousing is terrorism, no matter how defensible the goal of the attack may be.